the precipice is the last; conscience has no further measure of its fall. There is no slave so abject as the voluntary slave. The pervert is ready for any act, and exhibits his zeal only by his degradation.

As to offence in language of this order, the charge is absurd. There can be no offence in argument, in facts, in the appeal to known history. The real offence would be in suppressing truth, from favour to fiction-the most essential truth in favour of the most glaring fiction. As to want of charity, the true want would be in seeing the blind leading the blind, without an effort to prevent them both from falling into the pit; in standing amid the multitude of a lazar-house, without an attempt to heal, while we have the medicine in our hands; in marking the procession of millions down the broad way of darkness, in total indifference to the ruin of our fellow-men.

The rescue of the English King, Lords, and Commons from sudden extermination must have been felt by the nation as a great act of Divine mercy. Yet the results of that rescue were scarcely less worthy of national gratitude. The King was in heart hostile to Protestantism; the author of the "Book of Sports"-a plan for desecrating the Lord's-day-was already a Papist in all but the name. The project of a Popish marriage for the heir-apparent, the compact for the education of his offspring up to the age of thirteen by Papists, and the realisation of that project in the French marriage, proved that if the twentytwo years of the reign had been unstartled by the plot at its beginning, James would have declared the throne a "vassal of Rome."

If we ask, What have we gained by Protestantism in a national point of view; the true answer is given in one word-freedom. If we are asked the value of Protestant freedom, the true answer is given in a glance at the state of kingdoms under the yoke of Popery. There is not at this hour a vestige of freedom in any Popish kingdom. There is not a Popish Government, where a man may not be cast into a dungeon by arbitrary power on the most trivial charge, and there kept without trial till he dies. There

is not a Popish kingdom where a man may not see his children torn from him by a conscription, and sent to perish in some foolish war; his property torn from him by confiscation, or his Bible torn from him by a priest. In England we may have the common difficulties of life, but we have none of those difficulties exaggerated by power above law; none of those public humiliations which render life a shame; none of those public pangs which make the heart of man bleed for the degradation of his country. Popery is the true discipline for political slavery. The man who can suffer the priest to have the mastery of his mind, to dictate his opinions, to interdict his Bible, to force his wife, children, and servants to the confessional, is already fit to be ground under the heel of arbitrary power.

But, if we shall be told, in the language of the hour, the language of flippant indifference or languid security, that this disgrace cannot concern us; that the common sense of the country must scorn the imposture, her natural dignity disdain to embrace the follies of superstition, and her position at the head of intellectual Europe

qualify her to look down upon the antiquated subtleties of Rome; we have only to open our eyes to the actual progress of Popery within this half century.

In the year 1800 there were said to be but sixty Popish chapels in Great Britain. By the "Catholic Directory" of the present year, it is stated that the Popish churches, chapels, and stations, amount to 730 in England and Wales, and 164 in Scotland-total 894.

That the Popish priests in England and Wales amount to 985, and in Scotland to 130-total 1,115.

That the Popish Colleges in England and Wales amount to ten, with one in Scotland.

That the religious communities of men or monasteries in England amount to 23; and the convents or nunneries in Great Britain amount to 106.

That the Popish bishoprics in England amount to 13, with provostries, deaneries. and a whole staff of ecclesiastical subordinates.

To this evidence is to be added the amount of perversions, consisting of 100 clergy of the Established Church, publicly known; many of the laity, generally in the rank of gentlemen; and several of the female nobility.

with which Protestantism has trained itself to look upon that advance. The result is, that the worship of the Virgin and the Saints meets us on every side, that converts of all ranks constantly fall down before that fictitious worship, and that Rome already proclaims the spiritual slavery of the empire.

What, then, is Popery? Let it be tried by the only rule of faith-Scripture. The Ten Commandments were the great law of morality, enjoined on all ages, and pronounced by the actual voice of the Almighty. Our Lord has declared that to deny (to habitually violate) the least of those commandments incurs the wrath of God as much as the denial of the whole.

Popery violates the first, by worshipping a plurality of Gods, in its adoration of the Virgin and Saints.

The second-In bowing down to images of those fancied gods, honouring them with all the forms of worship, and even in professing to believe in their miraculous powers.

The third-By its notorious dispensations from oaths.

The fourth-By its desecration of the Lord's-day by labour, amusements, business, reviews, races, open theatres, and all the frivolities of the week doubled on the Continental Sunday.

The fifth-By the whole spirit of the conventual life. The monk and the nun can pay no honour to parents; they have broken all the filial ties; have bound themselves to others, and generally have even assumed new names. This celibacy, praised among the highest virtues by Rome, impeaches the original blessing of the Almighty, "increase and multiply and re

plenish the earth," produces much misery, and tempts to much licentiousness; impedes population, deprives society of the service of hundreds of thousands, and since its first observance has prohibited the existence of millions, of a race capable of immortality.

The sixth- By the maxim "That the heretic must die "-a maxim which has produced more misery to man than any other desperate principle among the insanities of superstition—has filled the dungeons and crowded the scaffold with the noblest of mankind-has expatriated, ruined, and slain millions, for a purpose evidently beyond human power,-the coercion of the mind.

The seventh-By the latitude of its absolutions for all offences against the honour of that matrimony, which it assumes as a sacrament, and whose licentious ness forms the social disgrace of Europe.

The eighth-By the sale of indulgences, the tariff of absolution, the merit of masses for the dead, and the releases from the pretended pains of an imaginary purgatory.

The ninth-By the whole system of legends, traditions, anathemas of sovereigns, and suppression of the Scriptures.

The tenth-By the perpetual grasp at power, the restless avidity of wealth, the possession of land in this country, once amounting to seven-fifteenths of the whole soil; the enormous opulence of the ancient convents and monasteries, and the claim of universal supremacy.

The two great principles of the Gospel are the forgiveness of sins solely through the sacrifice of our Lord, and the acceptance of prayer solely through his interces

sion. Rome asserts the merits of masses, mortifications, fastings, penances, meats, and death-bed donations to the Church, as conducing to salvation. Rome asserts the intercession of the Virgin and saints for the acceptance of prayer.

Thus Popery stands, in the presence of the Old Testament and the New. Believing in the Divine origin, inspired truth, and sacred authority of both, Protestantism reformed from the Church of Rome. Are we to resist, or to succumb? Are we to pay 30,000l. a-year to a Popish seminary-to pay a Popish episcopacy in the colonies?

We tolerate, because toleration is the dictate of our religion; but are we, therefore, to patronise ? Not merely to suffer, but to pension; not merely to pass by, but to raise into the high places of authority; and, with the most solemn conviction of its danger to our faith and our freedom, to look with a reverential reserve on assumptions, and think that our duty consists in a compromise with our indolence. It requires no prophetic eye to foresee the result of concession without conciliation, surrender without security, sacrifice of principle without the purchase of peace. And this result may arrive in a shorter time than our degenerate quietude is inclined to calculate. England looks with pride at the magnitude of her empire, yet that magnitude may only multiply the tangible points of her peril. She is now writhing under the keenest blow of a hundred years; none ever struck such home-suffering to her heart. The blow may have been only to awake her; but she must awake at home, and guard the treasure of immortal truth which has been entrusted to her keeping,

or she may see her fleets and armies the sport of chance, and see a contemptuous superstition, in its hour of festivity, summoning its thousand lords to profane the vessels of her temple. We

may speak of imperial strength, but what is strength in the casualties of human things, while every passing year but offers a new rebuke to the presumption of national security?

Have we not witnessed the shaking of the firmest thrones of Europe within the last ten years? Is not every Continental throne, at this moment, on a foundation of sand? How long is it since we believed our own supremacy in the East to be as fixed as the pillars of the earth? What voice do we hear at this moment across the Atlantic? How lately did every wind come swelled with boasts of public prosperity, of treasuries gorged with superfluous wealth, of an opulence that perplexed the State with the difficulty of its expenditure? And now that voice is a voice of mourning and woe, the cry of impoverished multitudes, the lamentation of national ruin!

There can be no question that Popery is advancing, and the worst sign of the times is, that the more it is advancing the less we feel alarm. Nothing can be so astonishing to a calm observer as the apathy which enwraps and melts down public vigilance on this subject into slumber. But we shall be told that the Church is fixed in the affections of the people; but if the people themselves be extensively perverted, where will be the fixture? There is no institution on which a populace, whether perverted in politics or religion, fastens with such angry and sudden fangs as a Church.

The great French Establishment, of four hundred bishops and forty thousand priests, perished in a single night by a single vote of an intoxicated Assembly. The Church of England, with its illustrious recollections, perished within the first three months of a Puritan Parliament. Such is human security.

I acknowledge no national strength but that which is founded on the favour of God. When that deserts a nation all the materials of its strength turn to its ruin. Its battlements crumble on the heads of its people-its protecting ocean sweeps over the land-its solid ground opens into the national grave. Nor is this the language of extravagance; it is written in the history of all nations-the inscription which alone survives in the marble slabs of ancient Babylon, Persia, and Rome, and only more emphatically on the tomb of Judah, for the warning of all posterity.

The dangers of indolence can be retrieved only by activity. Why should not Committees of the ablest clergy in every diocese be formed to contend for the truth? Why should not the eloquent, the logical, and the learned be urged by the heads of the Church to defend the public mind from the perpetual progress of superstition? It is not in the power of individuals in the humbler positions of the Church to effect this essential purpose. Popery is attractive-is operating hourly upon a larger portion of the people, and is aided by the whole influence of Popish Europe. Protestantism is the strength of England. We must prepare ourselves to encounter the danger, whether insidious or insolentwhether "the pestilence that walk

This is the great enemy. Suffer the encroachments of Popery, and all our other efforts are evasions, all our plans of education abortive, all our zeal shallow, and all our wisdom only graver folly. The progress of years will be only from calamity to calamity, till England is a swamp, and the nation a slave. Extinguish Popery, and Protestantism will place in her hands the sceptre of the globe! *

GRANTS OF PUBLICATIONS.

THE following applications for grants of publications have been made to the Protestant Asssociation :

A Scripture reader from a manufacturing district in the country writes as follows:

"September 3, 1857.

"I have been informed that the Protestant Association is making grants of books to Scripture-readers, &c., on the Romish controversy.

"Will you please inform me at your earliest convenience, as I should like to have any book upon that subject, there being so many Romanists in this town.

“I am, Sir, yours very truly,

46

In a subsequent communication of September 5, the same writer proceeds as follows:

"Having seen the set of Standard Protestant Works in the library of a Scripture-reader, I thought that I should very much like to have the same, as I am, in the discharge of my duties, daily coming in contact with Romanists.

"In reference to my paying half the price at which they sell, I may as well be honest, and say at once that at present I cannot afford to do so.

If your Committee feel justified in giving me all, or any of the books to which I refer, I have no doubt but

⚫ The Sermon is reprinted from the "Morning Advertiser." Copies, 7s. per hundred, may be had at the Office of the Protestant Association, 31, Strand.

vanced and God glorified by the same.

"In these days of error, I find it difficult to procure all the books which I need, and, consequently, I am always pleased if I can gain the smallest assistance.

"My time has been much devoted to the exposure of Infidelity and Mormonism, both by lectures and the pen, but recently I have been thinking of giving attention to Popery.

"May God hasten the time when truth shall reign triumphant, is the prayer of,

Yours very truly,

"To the Assistant Secretary of the Protestant Association."

The Committee have made a grant in the above case, as well as others that have come under their notice.

In acknowledging a grant, a City Missionary writes under date of September 1, 1857

"Sir, I beg to thank your Committee for the gift of valuable and useful works I have received from them.

"As regards tracts, I have marked some on the list enclosed, but any of your publications would be most acceptable. I believe they are all eminently calculated to expose and refute the errors and superstitions of Popery and Tractarianism.

"I am, Sir,